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The Black Friday Experience: Walmart will begin doorbuster sales on Thanksgiving at 6pm and they will run all night into Black Friday. If you want the classical Black Friday experience of fighting the crowds, you won’t find that shopping online at Amazon.com. Walmart wins this one.

Google Home: Walmart’s Black Friday sale has the Google Home going for $79 which is a saving of $50 (product link). Amazon doesn’t offer the Google Home (due to its competition with the Echo range) so this is a clear win for Walmart on what will prove to be a very popular product.

Affordable High Quality HDTVs: Walmart, along with Best Buy, is known for offering at least one high quality HDTV that is also extremely affordable. This year, Walmart is offering the Sharp 55-inch Class 4K Smart TV for $298 (product link). While this certainly isn’t a top of the line brand, I don’t expect Amazon to have a similar quality brand at a comparable price.

Black Friday Ad Transparency: Unlike Amazon, Walmart provides a full Black Friday ad (Walmart Black Friday Ad link) that lists out all of the models and items you can expect from its Black Friday sale. By contrast Amazon does not create a traditional Black Friday or Cyber Monday ad scan and typically lists many of its most sought after items in extremely vague terms. I expect to find Amazon listings along the lines of “32-inch 720p LED TV”. Walmart wins this round.

Amazon's Black Friday 2017 Store is now openAmazon

Where Amazon Black Friday Beats Walmart Black Friday 2017

Shipping: Walmart and Amazon will both offer free two-day shipping during Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2017. While Walmart’s free shipping has a minimum purchase of $35, you can take advantage of free two-day shipping on Amazon.com by signing up for a free 30 day trial of Amazon Prime (sign-up link). Even though having to sign up for Amazon Prime is not ideal, you can cancel for free within 30 days at anytime and you also get to use the very popular Prime Video and Prime Music services. For those reasons, I am declaring shipping a win for Amazon.

Quantity and Longevity of Black Friday Deals: As I previously mentioned, Amazon has already opened its Countdown to Black Friday Store on November 1st. I have also confirmed that Amazon will start some of its best Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales as early as November 19th, if not before. With Walmart only starting its Black Friday 2017 sale on November 23rd, I give this round to Amazon. (Amazon.com Black Friday store link)

Amazon Devices: Unlike Best Buy and Target who have dedicated pages in their Black Friday ads for Amazon devices, not a single one is found in the Walmart ad scan. So, as would be expected, Amazon wins the Amazon Device round. Confirmed Amazon devices prices include the Kindle Paperwhite E-reader for $89.99 beginning November 19, Amazon Echo Plus for $119.99 (save $30) beginning November 23, Amazon Cloud Cam Indoor Security Camera for $99.99 (save $20) beginning November 23, All-New Fire 7 Tablet for $29.99 (save $20) beginning November 23 and the All-New Fire HD 8 Tablet with Alexa for $49.99 (save $30) beginning November 23. (Amazon Devices link)

Cheap HDTVs: This one is Amazon’s to lose. Every Black Friday and Cyber Monday Amazon offers an extremely cheap 32-inch and/or 40-inch HDTVs. If quality is not your prerogative, then I suspect Amazon once again will have the lowest prices on 32-inch and 40-inch devices beating out Walmart. (cheapest 32-inch TV I can find on Amazon.com at the time of publishing)

Both Walmart and Amazon are Black Friday heavyweights and shopping at either this season will help you tremendously. Once Amazon officially releases its Black Friday sales list, I will follow-up with an in-depth dive into more specific Walmart Vs Amazon deals.

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I am an experienced freelance technology journalist. I have written for Wired, The Next Web, TrustedReviews, The Guardian and the BBC in addition to Forbes. I began in b2b print journalism covering tech companies at the height of the dot com boom and switched to covering con...